The significance of Nigeria’s last international – a 3-0 result against arch-nemesis Cameroon – is purely a matter of subjectivity. This is a theme that is hard to dispense with where Sunday Oliseh is concerned: faith cannot be wholly reconciled to rationality, and we all see what we want to.

The scoreline was great, and the performance was much improved, but these were innately riddled with caveats: Cameroon played almost all of the second period with 10 men, and Volker Finke had the five-time African champions listing in the middle of nowhere by the end. Still, you can only beat what’s in front of you, and if for nothing else, the win at least gives the sceptics something to work with.

For the first time since his appointment as Super Eagles boss, Oliseh will go into an international window on the back of overwhelming positivity. This is as much a good thing as it is a bad one: while he gets breathing space, he also loses the chip on the shoulder that seems to fuel modern football management; the constant need to motivate a group of lavishly remunerated professional footballers by appealing to an artificial sense of injustice.